Ever wonder where you came from? If you're like me, with immigrant ancestors who came to the US in the early 1900s, finding out might be harder than you think.
When my first daughter was born I suddenly wanted to know everything there was to know about our family history. I suppose I knew that I'd better start digging for information if I wanted to be able to tell her where she came from when she was old enough to ask .
Searching for my family history turned out to be as frustrating as hunting for a needle in a haystack, but also as exciting as digging for buried treasure - especially when I actually found something. Over the past 18 years, I've been bitten by the genealogy bug many times and searched for information in between having four children, writing for an Army newspaper, and teaching at a school for dyslexic children.
I've learned a lot about genealogy. Now I want to pass that knowledge on to others who might be starting their own quest for information about their families. I also want to present my own family with all that I've learned and will continue to find about my ancestors. This genealogy blog is dedicated to sharing all the data that I've collected so far (as well as how I found it) with family members and anyone else who might be interested in gleaning a little information on how to find their roots.
So now I want to share everything with you. The only problem is, where to begin? I have so much information that I am not sure how or where or what to begin with. I've decided to "just do it" (to use a line from the old Nike commercials), start with myself (as most genealogists know works best), write about how I got interested in genealogy and then go from there.
As a mother of four growing children, I haven't had the time or the money to pursue my roots (or my husband's roots) as often or to dig as deeply as I have wanted. Our ancestors were all Eastern European, believe it or not, so records have been hard to come by. Early on, I researched records on microfilm in libraries and at our local Family History Center at the LDS Church (now there is FamilySearch - a website with an online catalog and a searchable database with links to many digitized records). Although I couldn't do it all at once, I found out that that's okay. Now, with more and more online genealogy resources and databases becoming available every day, my family tree is growing and growing.
So begins my genealogy blog "Genea in a Tree." I thought of calling it "Genea in a Bottle" because I would really like to have a genie who could help me find my way back in time to discover my ancestors and learn about their lives. I also would love to discover a message in a bottle full of interesting information that one of my great-grandmothers wrote down about the family and sent off in hopes of reaching me right about now. But my son Nick came up with "Genea in a Tree" and I liked it. So thanks, Nick, for naming my blog!
Now imagine me cracking a bottle on the bow of our flagship genealogy project to christen it. And anchors away!
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